In recent years, a plasma display panel apparatus (hereinafter, referred to as “PDP apparatus”) has come to be widely used as a flat display apparatus. Currently, a commonly used PDP apparatus is of an alternate-current type (AC-type), which possesses a high technological potential. Among AC-type PDP apparatuses, an AC-type surface discharge PDP apparatus (hereinafter, simply referred to as “PDP apparatus”) is favored for its advantageous lifetime characteristics.
A PDP apparatus is constituted from, such as, a panel unit that displays an image and a display drive unit that drives the panel unit based on an inputted signal. Of these, the panel unit includes a front panel and a back panel that are placed opposing each other via a gap. A plurality of pairs of electrodes each of which is composed of a scan electrode and a sustain electrode are formed in parallel to each other in a stripe pattern on one main surface of a glass substrate of the front panel, and are covered by a dielectric layer and a protective layer.
A data electrode is formed in a stripe pattern on one main surface of a glass substrate of the back panel and covered by a dielectric layer. Barrier ribs in a stripe pattern or grid pattern are provided in a protruding manner on the dielectric layer. In addition, on the back panel, a phosphor layer is formed on an inner wall surface of a concave portion formed by the dielectric layer and the barrier ribs. Each phosphor layer is formed and assigned a color in correspondence with the concave portions partitioned by the barrier ribs.
The front and back panels are arranged such that the protective layer and the phosphor layers oppose each other, and the scan and sustain electrodes and the data electrode intersect three-dimensionally. The gap between the front and back panels is a discharge space filled with a gas mixture such as xenon-neon (Xe—Ne) or xenon-neon-helium (Xe—Ne—He). In the panel configured as above, each area at which the pair of electrodes intersects the data electrode corresponds to a discharge cell.
The display drive unit of the PDP apparatus is connected to each electrode in the panel unit and can apply a voltage pulse to the each electrode independently. The display drive unit drives the panel unit using an in-field time division gray scale display method. This method divides one TV field into a plurality of subfields and performs a control on ON/OFF state of each subfield based on an inputted image signal, the grayscale display being executed by a total number of “ON” states in one TV field.
One problem area with the PDP apparatus is its extremely low discharge efficiency of a sustain discharge, which is 4[%] to 8[%]. Accordingly, an improvement on the discharge efficiency is sought after from standpoints such as lowering a power consumption. In response to these demands, various approaches have been made, and one such approach is a study on increasing a ratio of Xe in discharge gas (for an example, refer to Patent Document 1).
Patent Document 1: Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application Publication No. 2002-83543